“As you can kind of tell from meeting her, she burns very bright and has just a great, very generous energy,” the actor said. “For that to suddenly not being on-set, [whether] talking about it in publicity or just in life…When you see her around at a Star Wars event or anywhere, to have her character – not only her character in the movie [but who she is as a person] – missing from that very small unit is a tragedy.” Driver noted that the Star Wars crew finished shooting Star Wars: Episode VIII “last summer,” when he last saw Fisher “on set being Princess Leia” (now General Leia Organa).

Following the news of Fisher’s death last month, many of her cast mates in the original Star Wars trilogy, including Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, paid tribute to her sense of humor and the acting skill that brought to life an iconic cinema character.

“Carrie was one-of-a-kind, brilliant, original,” Ford said in a statement. “Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely. My thoughts are with her daughter Billie, her mother Debbie, her brother Todd and her many friends. We will all miss her.”

“It’s never easy to lose such a vital, irreplaceable member of the family, but this is downright heartbreaking,” Hamill wrote on Facebook. “Carrie was one-of-a-kind who belonged to us all – whether she liked it or not. She was our Princess, damn it, and the actress who played her blurred into one gorgeous, fiercely independent and ferociously funny, take-charge woman who took our collective breath away. Determined and tough, but with a vulnerability that made you root for her and want her to succeed and be happy.”